Osechi were traditionally made in advance of the holiday, so the dishes are usually salty, sweet or both: the salt and sugar preserve them throughout the holiday. “The idea is that women do lots of work beforehand and then relax,” Ishikawa said. “Although that never happens, because Japanese women are always in the kitchen.”
Mochi, starchy rice cake, is also a necessity at New Year celebrations: it is an almost holy food in Japan, used as a religious offering at Shinto shrines and made, traditionally, by an entire town or street at the end of each year, with everyone taking turns pounding the rice in a process called mochitsuki. “When I first moved back to Japan, one thing that I could not understand was mochi,” Sato said. “It tasted like nothing to me.” Now, she says, she sees the appeal. “It is very bland, but the texture is addictive. And it isn't New Year's without mochi, and the crazy stories on the news about it.”
Mochi can be very glutinous, especially when immersed in hot soup. Every year, during the holiday week, headlines scream out the number of mochi-related choking fatalities.
Hashimoto said she prefers both the taste and the texture of grilled mochi, with its added whiff of charcoal.
As befits the scion of a soy-brewing family, she has a highly developed palate. She is expert at using a few drops of shoyu to bring out the flavors of a dish without adding a strong soy sauce taste.
Hashimoto adds a few drops of lighter-bodied usukuchi shoyu to her namasu, adding roundness without saltiness in a perfect illustration of umami, the Japanese fifth taste.
Osechi are traditionally served in gorgeously arranged jubako, highly lacquered bento boxes. “First we look, then we taste,” Ishikawa said with satisfaction, tying a chive around a roll of smoked salmon and parsley-flecked cream cheese, one of her New York-meets-Nagoya creations.
Cooking with this level of attention to detail is on the wane in Japan as elsewhere; many families buy their osechi at fancy department stores or upscale food markets (or even at 7-Elevens). In the US, osechi can be ordered from Mitsuwa supermarkets and a few rigorously traditional places like Delica in San Francisco and Kai in New York, where a limited-edition 30-item jubako costs US$350. (One stacked jubako feeds four people.)
But expatriates like Hashimoto prefer to make their own osechi, re-creating the holiday from a distance.
“There are some things we make only at this time of year,” she said. “Cooking brings back the smell of home, the snow on the roofs, the sound of the gongs from New Year's Eve.”
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